Felix A. Voigt

Felix A. Voigt (full name Felix Franz Alfred Voigt , born October 13, 1892 in Breslau , † March 31, 1962 in Würzburg ) was a German German studies and grammar school teacher. He is particularly known for his research on the life and work of the writer Gerhart Hauptmann .

Life

Felix A. Voigt, the son of the Secretary General of Customs and invoice Council Bernhard Voigt, visited the Royal Wilhelm Gymnasium in Breslau and studied from summer semester 1911 at the University of Breslau the subjects classical philology , history and philosophy . During the First World War he was drafted into the Landsturm on February 3, 1915 . During his training, he temporarily completed his studies on July 31, 1915 with an oral emergency examination for the higher teaching post. From December 17, 1915 to November 5, 1917 he fought as Vice Sergeant at the front and was wounded three times. Thereupon he was dismissed from active service and prepared in Breslau for the final teaching examination, which he passed on October 1, 1918 with the grade "sufficient". He then taught as a trainee lawyer at the gymnasium in Beuthen , from 1921 as an assessor (since 1922: teacher) at the municipal high school in Görlitz .

On May 1, 1929 Voigt was appointed director of the state high school in Kreuzburg in Upper Silesia . At 36 he was the youngest grammar school director in Prussia. Voigt was already married at this point and had two children. From the 1920s on, he was engaged in scientific work in his spare time, mainly related to the literature of Silesia. In addition to the philosopher Jakob Böhme , he was primarily concerned with contemporary literature. Voigt had been a great admirer of Gerhart Hauptmann since his school days . In addition, he dealt with the ancient history of religion and mythology and wrote several articles for the real encyclopedia of classical antiquity (RE) published by Wilhelm Kroll .

After the National Socialists came to power , Voigt was retired as local chairman of the German Democratic Party on September 1, 1933 due to the so-called law to restore the professional civil service . Since he could not support his family with his meager pension, he moved to Neustadt in Upper Silesia , where he worked in Max Pinkus' Silesian library . Pinkus also gave him personal acquaintance with Gerhart Hauptmann, whom Voigt first visited in November 1933 in Agnetendorf . Voigt and his wife became the captain's confidante and looked after his rich literary work. in the spring of 1938 Voigt accompanied the poet to Rapallo. In 1942 he learned that Hauptmann wanted to destroy his drama “Die Finsternisse” because it could endanger him politically. Voigt and his wife Camilla then copied this work and received it for posterity after Hauptmann actually destroyed it in January 1945.

In addition to numerous literary studies on Hauptmann's work, Voigt also wrote a large-scale biography of the poet, which was lost after the end of the Second World War when he fled to southern Germany. Until December 1945 Voigt had worked together with Carl FW Behl in the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Archiv. From May 1945 he lived in Kemnath . After Hauptmann's death in 1946, Voigt gave a lecture at a memorial event at the University of Würzburg , which then awarded him an honorary doctorate in philosophy in the summer of 1947 . In 1956 Voigt finally moved to Würzburg, where he died six years later.

Fonts (selection)

• with Curt Adler and Richard Jecht: Jakob Böhme. Commemorative gift of the city of Görlitz on the 300th anniversary of his death . Goerlitz 1924
• with Otto Engelhardt: Four wall paintings from the history of Görlitz in the ballroom of the Luisenschule in Görlitz . Goerlitz 1928
• Ancient and ancient attitude towards life in Gerhart Hauptmann's work . Wroclaw 1935
• Captain Studies. Volume 1: Articles about the period from 1880 to 1900 . Wroclaw 1936
• The Gerhart Hauptmann Collection of the State and University Library in Breslau . In: Central Journal for Libraries . Volume 53 (1936), pp. 297-307
• with Walter A. Reichart: Captain and Shakespeare. A contribution to the history of Shakespeare's survival in Germany . Breslau 1938. 2nd, revised edition, Goslar 1947
• Gerhart Hauptmann, the Silesian . Breslau 1942. Revised, Goslar 1947. 3rd edition, Munich 1953. 4th, revised edition, Würzburg 1988
• with Carl FW Behl: Gerhart Hauptmann's life. Chronicle and picture . Berlin 1942
• with Carl FW Behl: Chronicle of Gerhart Hauptmann's life and work . Munich 1957. New edition Würzburg 1993
• Wilhelm Studt (Ed.): Gerhart Hauptmann and the ancient world . Berlin 1965

literature

• Felix A. Voigt . In: Werner Schuder (Ed.): Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar . Founded by Joseph Kürschner . 9th edition. De Gruyter, Berlin 1961, OCLC 257208470 , p. 2170 .
• Carl FW Behl: NR, Schlesien 7 (1962), p. 123f.
• Carl FW Behl: Memories of Felix A. Voigt . In: The Silesian . Volume 14, Issue 17 (1962), p. 5
• H.-L. Abermeier: National social coercive measures against teachers of secondary schools in Upper Silesia . In: Oberschlesisches Jahrbuch . Volume 4 (1988), pp. 185f.
• Mechthild Pfeiffer-Voigt (Ed.): Gerhart-Hauptmann-Studien 1934–1958. By Felix A. Voigt . Berlin 1999 (with picture and short biography)
• Eugeniusz Klin: “In old, loyal friendship”. Correspondence between Felix A. Voigt and Paul Mühsam. Selected and edited by Else Levi-Mühsam and Mechthild Pfeiffer-Voigt . Würzburg 2005

Web links

• Literature by and about Felix A. Voigt in the catalog of the German National Library
• Personnel form from Felix A. Voigt in the personnel file of the BIL expert body in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)